“But it took time for the Suns to resign themselves to sending Nash to the Lakers. In the meantime, an erroneous report surfaced, indicating that Nash was set to join the Knicks. It took until the evening of July 4 for the Suns to pull the trigger on the deal.

“I felt really bad because I had to leave New York and Toronto waiting in the wings,” Nash said. “Because if Phoenix didn’t do it, I had to choose.”

Which one would he have chosen? “I’m not going to say,” he said. “Both had a huge opportunity.”

Neither city could offer what Los Angeles did: proximity to his family.

“I knew that if I were in New York or Toronto, no matter what, I’m going to see my kids far, far less,” Nash said. “Whereas here I’ve already seen them four or five times in six weeks. So that’s it. The basketball stuff is luckily awesome, too. But that was really secondary.”

The Nash stuff was hot stuff here this past summer. I spoke a lot about the Knicks being “win now” and if that is the case they will have to think about offers for Shumpert, who, as we said in September, would have been part of the package for Nash. The real important news here is that the Knicks were lucky Nash essentially chose LA over NY. Jason Kidd has been a perfect fit here.

As far as the Howard stuff, had the Nets not dealt their lottery pick for Gerald Wallace, I’m told, Howard would be in Brooklyn.